I love writing. I revere the use of language as an instrument for seeking the truth about life. My books are downloadable and the paperback editions will be appearing soon. Click on the links at the right side of this page. Peruse this blog, it's loaded with music, photography and writing. Hey, sign up for my email list!

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Watching
dogs mate isn't my favorite activity.
But this was MY dog mating, my Bear, the surprise doggie love of my
life. We acquired Bear in a last-second
rescue from a puppy mill. I've told
that story elsewhere. http://bit.ly/evbFda

Sometimes
Fox (that's my partner) takes Bear to the grocery, all eight pounds of him, snugged
in a sling. Fox was putting items into her basket when she was approached by a
husky woman in her late forties.

"He's
male?" the woman asked, putting her face near to Bear so she could see his
eyes. She smiled and made kissy
sounds. Bear's lips rose to reveal his teeth, a sign that he did not appreciate being patronized. The stranger retreated a few steps. "He's got to be male!" she said.

Fox nodded.

"Tell
me he's still intact, please!", the woman implored. " I have a female poodle just his size
and I would love to put them together.
What do you think?"

Fox
liked the idea, so one thing led to
another which led to this: Fox was out of town when the lady's dog came into heat. The dog's name was Snickers. I got the job of supervising the mating of Bear with Snickers. Solo . The phone
rang, the heat was on and I was designated the Master of Ceremonies.

Bear
stands six inches from the ground at the shoulders. He would never win a blue ribbon or Best Of anything unless it
was a dog show run by old beatniks on Quaaludes.

It's
strangely deceiving to describe Bear as tiny.
He has short legs and a round powerful torso. If I had four of him they could pull a sled through the snow.

There was a knock at the door. I pulled the screen back to open. "Here she is, " said Tammy, our new friend, and
dropped a gangly brown creature at my feet. There
was no ceremony, no meeting and greeting as Snickers' owner left her bitch with me. " Gotta run! I'll see you tomorrow
night around five," she said.
"Good luck."

Snickers
and Bear had a whiff of each other and without foreplay or so much as a hello,
Snickers lifted her tail and accepted Bear's pursuit.

It
was clear from the outset that we had a problem. Snickers stood nine inches tall at the shoulder. Bear looked like a sixth grader dancing with
a girl who towers over him.

Snickers and puppies

So
far Bear had been a masturbator. He
loyally and monogamously humped a stuffed toy dog named Greta. He got it right; he knew Greta's business
end. He pulled at her ear, beat her up
a little bit, jumped and humped for a while before dismounting. Greta was the perfect size and she obeyed
implicitly. Bear would beat her up
again, hop on and hump some more.
Bear's humping was so enthusiastic that he literally launched himself
into the air. All four feet left the
ground as he banged away.

When Bear went into this amatory activity, Fox and I had to look away. Otherwise we would start laughing out loud, and Bear's sense of dignity would have been damaged. I am not being facetious.

Snickers
was not Greta. She was alive. She
moved. She wagged her tail in the air,
and the fug of pheromones filled the room with flirty invitation. Snickers wasn't much to look at. She was a stringy toy poodle, dark brown,
with a long pointed nose. She growled
but we were told in advance that growling was her only means of vocal
expression. There was no explanation
why this was so. It was a simple
fact. It made Snickers seem as if she
had a grievance with the world.

Wonderful. Bear didn't care. Bear had the whiff and was panting as he followed Snickers around
the small front room of our RV. I must remind
you, we live in an RV. There wasn't any
hiding place, no love nest or cozy nook where the two could go off and get
acquainted. That isn't the way dog
mating works. The act of copulation
must be witnessed. And, hopefully,
repeated as often as possible.

Snickers'
business end was a little bit too high for Bear. He was game, oh yes. He
got up on his hind legs and tried to mount the tall girl. Snickers kept walking in figure eights. I had the feeling she'd done this
before. In fact, Snickers was a bit
long in the tooth. Snickers was pushing
the dog equivalent of forty. We hadn't
known any of this. Our deal was
simple. We would get one puppy from the
litter.

Bear
tried grabbing her around the waist with his front legs. Snickers kept her tail up and her parts
ready for action, but she wasn't helping poor Bear. She kept walking figure eights, up and down, round and
round. She dragged the grappling Bear
along with her, growling all the way.

Bear
tried jumping. He hopped on Snickers'
back but the angle was all wrong. He
slid back to the ground without gaining purchase.

I
felt awful for Bear. His eyes held a
bewildered sorrow. His tongue

hung out and vibrated in rhythm
with his panting. He tried grabbing one
of Snicker's hind legs and climbing.
Snickers walked around the room with Bear attached to her svelte but
aging body. I tried not to laugh. I have learned that Bear is capable of
suffering acute embarrassment.

Is
that a stretch for you? That dogs can
be embarassed? I've learned that
animals have complex emotional lives.
The best I can do is try to understand their feelings.

Bear
was caught between humiliation and lust.
In the hierarchy of instinct, lust wins out. Bear wasn't going to quit until he reached his goal.

I tried to help by putting phone books under Bear's legs. I was crawling around
thrusting books, cushions and boxes to elevate him to the action position, but
of course nothing helped because the two dogs were in constant motion and
weren't about to stop and think things through. I believe Bear felt a little better, though, because I was making such a fool of myself.

It
just didn't work. Now and then Snickers
would turn her head to look at Bear and growl.
That was the only sound she knew how to make. Growl. I might have hoped
for a more supportive partner for my boy, but fate had brought the couple
together and fate would determine the outcome.

I
sat at my computer while all this strenuous activity went on under and around
my chair. Bear's energy was
faltering. I was beginning to worry
about him.

I tried to encourage him to take
a break and drink some water. No
deal. He had been following and trying
to mount Snickers for three hours and he wasn't about to quit.

That
bitch was in HEAT! (Note: My use of the word Bitch is correct. It's not a word I use, otherwise, not ever. I think the word has acquired way too much currency in our culture. End of note.)

I was thinking about ways to end the
situation. I was afraid Bear was
dehydrating. The only way I had to
separate the dogs was to close the door that

enclosed the RV's bathroom and
bedroom. I looked down from my chair
and noticed that Bear had adopted a new strategy. He was hopping from foot to foot. His front paws were on Snicker's flanks and she was still
ceaselessly moving. I wanted to scream
at her, Stand still for god's sake!

Bear's
hippity hop from foot to foot had the effect of getting him some altitude. I don't know how he worked it out but the
next thing I knew the two dogs were locked together.

Nature,
clever nature, had designed the female dog's parts to close down on the male's
penis and trap it there. Snickers was
still moving in her relentless figure eights but now Bear was being dragged
along, fumbling over his own paws.

Snickers
growled. Bear looked up at me in utter
bewilderment. His tongue hung halfway
down his chest, his mouth dripped saliva.
He managed to get himself onto Snicker's back so he could match her
strides with his rear legs. I know he
felt ridiculous. Now and then he would lose his rhythm and
drop into an ungainly sprawl. He was
dragged on his back, on his side, as he struggled to achieve a position that
gave him a modicum of dignity.

When
Tammy arrived for Snickers around five the next day, the pair had successfully
copulated twice. The second time was
easier. Bear used his hippity hop move
and was trapped by Snickers for another ride around the RV.

I
could swear, when the whole thing was finished, Bear's eyes pleaded with me to
get him neutered as soon as possible.

"Listen to me, man," he was saying. "If you want my balls you can have 'em! Get them off me. If this is dog sex, I don't want anything to do with this business, ever again!"

Snickers'
litter consisted of two pups, a male and a female. The girl pup,

Gabe in blue, Kioni in pink

named Kioni, was twice the size
of the boy pup, Gabriel. We didn't want
a female, so runty little Gabe became a
member of our family.

At
first we thought he might be a special needs dog. We worried about his body and his mind, but Gabe turned out to be
clever and resilient.

Friday, October 12, 2012

An identity is an infinitely precious thing. Cheryl Strayed's best selling book, WILD, is about building an identity out of flawed raw materials. The book touches us in deep places because all of us are involved in the same struggle. All of us come from flawed raw materials.In the past, in smaller, more coherent cultures, identity was imparted from that culture and its well-designed rites of passage. Walkabout, Vision Quest, the names are many but the concept, of moving from childhood to maturity, is the same. These passages into adulthood are achieved by ceremonial activity that could be dubbed Initiation By Ordeal. In WILD, Cheryl devises her own initiation, the Ordeal of walking alone for more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail.When she began her long walk in the Mojave Desert, she was grieving the death of her mother from cancer. Cheryl's mother died at age forty five.The spirit of Cheryl's mother inhabits this book. She isn't idealized, she isn't sainted, but Cheryl makes it clear that her mother provided the structure and the strength to enable her three children to cope and endure. This book, WILD, is Cheryl's love song to her mother. Its pages are Cheryl's way of working with her grief and giving it that alchemical fulfilment: turning pain into understanding.Cheryl's father figures were at best shaky. The men with whom Cheryl's mother related were often negligent and sometimes brutal. They left Cheryl with a gaping hole in her heart. When her mother died, Cheryl was forced to wear the mantle of orphan-hood, too young. Far too young. Her childhood and adolescence were a confusion of conventional achievements and marginal lifestyles. She was a prom queen. She was dirt poor and lived on remote acreage in Minnesota. She straddled worlds. She was the popular high school girl who liked boys and was liked by boys. She was a thinker who struggled mightily with fundamental questions. Who am I? What am I supposed to do with my life?

The kernel of her desire was to be a writer. She wandered from Minnesota to Oregon and back again. She fell in love and got married to a good man. You know what people say about good men: they're hard to find. Cheryl loved this man but couldn't tame her own WILD side. She cheated and felt ashamed. Then she cheated again. And again. In Portland she met a man who consorted with dangerous diseases. He became Cheryl's heroin partner.

After her mother's shattering death, Cheryl came to one of those fateful forks in the road. After making a string of bad decisions, Cheryl summoned strength from within herself. The shame of her addiction was in conflict with her desire to honor her mother. She made the right decision. She would break off the flirtation with heroin and she would create her own Ordeal By Initiation.

She bought a huge backpack that she nicknamed Monster. She over-packed, weighed herself down with too much of everything and set out on an epic walk. Her feet grew blistered, her toenails fell off, one after another. She fenced with pain, exhaustion, doubt and the desire to quit. She didn't quit. She met people on the trail who touched her most quickened instincts. On the Pacific Crest Trail, you may walk with a person for an hour or a day. That person will be embedded within your psyche forever.I didn't want WILD to end. I didn't want to leave Cheryl's company. I love this book and though I'm sometimes goaded to envy the success of other writers, I have no such feeling for Cheryl Strayed. She deserves her success.She's experiencing one of those overnight triumphs that takes twenty or thirty years to prepare. It's my belief that Cheryl blasted a few doors open for other writers. I hope I am one of them. I too have my story, my memoir of my Initiation by Ordeal. I have been hanging on the edge of resignation, just about to give up, heartbroken with discouragement.WILD gave me courage. WILD pulled me back from the precipice of complete capitulation. If Cheryl can become one of those rare black swans who appear as if from nowhere, so can I.